UnBoxing: Open Space Agility workshop

Day One:
Beginning concepts - leaders have a duty to set direction and name constraints; yet stay away from telling how to achieve the goals. Executives commits to holding first OpenSpace and Acting upon the proceedings. And holding a second OpenSpace after a time box (100 days).

A constraining forces in OSA will be the Agile Manifesto, actions and experiments should be judged by this definition and if seen to support it, be considered good.

Another foundational concept of OSA - Self Management - defined as the behavior of a group to know and practice their decision making process (whatever that may be). A good test is to ask 5 people how their group makes decisions - then count the number of answers - one general description of their decision making apparatus points strongly toward a self-managing team.

Q: Many agilist are searching for a scaling framework. If the foundations of agile mindset shift is a willingness to engage in dialogue about possibilities; how does one scale willingness? Dan pointed to UX designer Micah Zimring candidly discusses his experience of the OpenSpace Agility process, including his initial skepticism going in. (Note: When you hear the the word ‘churn’ used in this interview, it means ‘lack of decision-making’ or ‘indecision’).

Paraphrasing Dan: 'Most Impediments come from: People making decisions they do not have authority to make e.g. boundary issues with authority & decisions.'

Day Two:
There was a interesting conversation happening on the pre-meeting video conference... people engaged and communicating on a true personal level (acting with trust). This is quite unusual for so many tech video conferences, regardless of team size, team maturity level, group dynamics. I felt as if I'd entered an old familiar bar where everyone knew my name - Norm!

We might return to this concept... later...

So my notes say we might have started with a bit of a lesson on the distinction between some points on the influence spectrum. After all many Agile "coaches" attempt to influence other people, many times they have great impact for the good (well at least that's how I get to sleep at night). I may have ruined this one guy's whole sleep over... he joined our little band of developers in Seattle and got along well, we learned to develop working tested software, and to the direction of a great PO. She had the vision to lead us on a journey - there was some unknown territory along the way - and we discovered the reasons for some weird missions. Later this guy wrote on a discussion thread about the woes of the good old days - that he'd rather not work on Agile projects any more, because he knows from experience what it can be, what it should be, ... but the project are not that. It's lipstick on a pig. He'd rather do waterfall projects. Because coding to the spec is easy, no work at all really. However playing the in-between game is hell.

Oh - sorry - that crap just jumped out of my fingers... we were talking about influence - all the way down the slippery slope to manipulation and into coercion. Now I can not define these term - now after two beers ... and it's just going to get worse as I type and imbibe. So look it up your self if you don't have a good feeling of the continuum we are discussion. Do you agree these are on the same dimension?

When does one cross the invisible line from influence to manipulation? Does it matter... if the ends justify the means? Dan suggested a way to view manipulation - I'd never heard it explained so well. I've always considered manipulation as influence in the eyes of the influencer, while being manipulation in the eye of the beholder. Dan defined manipulation as something you realized happened four hours ago.

What's this got to do with OSA? Turns out it is a foundational principle of OpenSpace. The aspect of having freedom and agency to make a decision to participate. Show of hands - who has been informed by the leaders that they were going to now start practicing this Scrum process, and these coaches were here to help you? All the hands go up. Who has been invited to be part of an Agile Transformation? Two hands only. Which set of people have been influenced? Which set have been manipulated? How does this effect the long term commitment to a "transformation"?

Topic Jump to Meetings - what is the generic structure of a meeting:

Goal

Rules

Progress

Participation

Going into detail on these... but let's just focus upon Progress - how's it measured? Maybe in most meeting by the clock hands. Sometimes by agenda items checked off. Are those items classified into one of a few groups: discussion, decision, information dissemination, a waste of time.

Participation - is your meeting an Opt-In meeting or an attendance required (with unknown consequences to be determined later by the boss) meeting? Perhaps making this explicit would be helpful in an organization of more than 5 people. At the heart of OSA - the invitation (Opt-In) format of the events.

So how does a meeting differ from a Game? Is there any real difference? Fun... oh yes! Why is fun not an emergent outcome of meetings? Games have this very same structure.

Games and meetings have these aspects as well as structure:

Control

Progress

Belonging

One big difference in games and poorly held meetings is the visual depiction of progress. In beginner games (Candy Land) the board is the indicator of progress. It takes very little synthesis to determine who is progressing well in the game. Chess is quite different. How are your meetings progressing? What visual indicator of progress do you include for the people? Do they become motivated or demotivated by seeing progress made toward a goal?

Why are most games perfectly well run with player participation and no umpire or referee? Is it the well understood mental model of the rules and proper behavior on the field of play? What would happen if meetings had these rules? Do they have rules? Where's your meeting rule book?

Topic transition to Leadership concerns for OSA.

Sponsor understanding their role and what is about to happen (maybe they feel out of control).
- development of theme (together, maybe a group)
- invitation development (come finish the story with us)
Sponsor must communicate:
- explore the theme & contribute to proceeding (artifact)
- suspend disbelief for the duration of experiment (100 day trial)
- invited to the post-experiment Open Space (in 100 days)

Book: Leader's Guide to Store telling - Steve Denning

Leaders are constantly signaling - ever micro expression gets a mean assigned by followers constantly watching - no rest for the leader - never off stage, the mic is alway HOT.

Emergent Leadership is like musical chairs. People change their minds during the game; they may be motivated to move quickly to acquire a seat (at the table), to contribute to the outcome of the story we write to become our future selves. Open Space encourages people to get a chair.

OpenSpace is a game about authorizing and authority - who has it, who is giving it, who is receding it, etc. It is played out in a high frequency feedback space of face to face - full body contact - interactive group dynamic. It is full of potential energy - release it.

Open Space is an Authorizing Function over the time domain of the event.

People authorize others to contribute to the shared understanding, by giving their time and attention to the speaker. Because they are also free to seek more value if they deem the speakers value lower than opportunity cost.

Day Three:

We started the lesson with the topic of Leadership Prep - the admonishment was to "eat our own dog food" - to open space for the leader to learn about OSA to experiment with safe to fail experiments, to inspect the results and adapt to the needs of the leaders to grow in their understanding of the Open Space. Search softly for the leader's maximum skin they will put into the game, cut that in half and practice. It is this experience (safe to fail) that will lead to understanding - it may be the only way for mere mortals to catch a glimpse of the philosopher's stone inside of the Open Space onion skin of powerful technology.

At some point Harold explained the inside joke of the term Technology in OST... perhaps it's useful in the simplicity of it's inverse, in it's sarcastic usage... OpenSpace Technology requires the very first and hardest to understand technology that humanoids developed - language skills.

Warning: Do NOT lead with an unacceptable invitation. This was Dan's advice, and other's echoed it. The advice seemed to come from a deep desire to short cut our journey toward successful engagements with clients. With an action step of starting small, almost imperceivable - don't mention OSA at all - just encourage the leader to make a meeting optional. A true Opt-In event, with the power of invitation and no repercussion for checking out. See what the leaders can discover in the behaviors of the people - are they following - are they happily engaged - are they curious - who's participating - who's willing and able to change behaviors?

Another experiment (a few steps up the ladder) - Dan calls it an "A1" meeting.

We spent a bit of time discussing and practicing non-verbale signaling. A suggested resource: The nonVerbal Dictionary. Do you read body language? If not you may be well toward one side of the autism spectrum. Most everyone does read body language quite well, we've been doing it since very early - I think I heard a story that infants can read facial patterns.

Look into Powerpoint karaoke - a great team game.

Topic of Organizational Learning (time to get your Senge on).

What impedes org learning - fear. When a human is afraid the Neo-cortext is not being engaged, and the monkey mind is getting all the blood flow, this severally limits learning.

What can we do to counter act the stimulus-response mechanism over which we have little immediate control? Create physiological safety... yeah, but how? Well maybe a lesson for another time - but for sure this is a learning enabler. To check this out - watch small kids on the playground. Playing is learning. When play stops - what happened?

Topic of Informal Authorization. How do we recognize this form of authorization? It's communicated constantly, learn to sense it... it's not on a sign post, or in a sound wave - yet it is all around you. Tune into the signal, learn to amplify it, to dampen it and to withdraw informal authorization. It is a powerful force - recognize who is using this, and who is oblivious.

Invitation: What are the most simple invitations (with 4 aspects) that we can generate?

Spark some invitation experiences: Issue 3 or more invitations this week.

Read Sprit by Harrison Owen PDF - search for number of occurrences of "open space" vs "Open Space" investigate usage and content - what was he signaling?

Well expect to be surprised: Harrison Owen showed up on the conference call to share some space with our group.

Harrison Owen - discover/giver of Open Space Technology

Here are some badly paraphrased quotes from Harrison:

I have a suspicion or a conviction that:

life is self organizing; so, what is a manager for?

self organization does the best job; are we stupid to use management techniques?

"Since the universe has been practicing for 13 billion years on self-organizing principles - its not really about improving self organization; but how do we optimize self-organization to enable people?"

Read his book: Wave Rider

Peter _____ studying behavioral characteristics with performant systems - they have zero regard for external authority. From scale of micro cosmic. This group self-organization principle appears to hold true. Discipline with respect to self organization phenomena :: forcing people to do something that doesn't work for them ... is counter to system goals in long run. Distinguish between external / internal discipline :: bad / good.-->

Example traditional education techniques rely upon discipline - it's a destructive force. Learning is play - Learning is a self organizational system a phenomena with a virtuous cycle.

Day Four:

Question: what's up with this core protocol: Check in/Check Out process?
A: it's a subtle little hack - about getting a small agreement to communicate and engage.
One might also find info in Influence books topics.

Question: Harrison Owen spoke of "sitting in the Question" - what's that about?
A: not knowing - be OK in that space.
One might also find solace in Donald Rumsfeld's "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."
- hummm... or NOT!

Liminality - participants "stand at the threshold" between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the ritual establishes.

Learning is CHANGE - it is hard to un-learn :: therefore hard to change. Many people will make up myths to avoid uncertainty and worry - be very very careful who is allowed to create the myths of your organization. If the leader's are not telling stories - the vacuum of story telling will be filled - by someone.

One may think of OpenSpace as a study in authorization - imagine that one could easily and without malice deAuthorize a colleague that was advocating for a position or path that you disagree with. In OpenSpace this should be relativity easy - see the Law of Two Feet.

Some Wisdom & Warnings:

The Proceedings - one may think the sponsor will do everything suggested in the proceeding and that the sponsor will be responsible for carrying it out - think again.

Watch out for a sponsor that said YES easily. (But action show them as meaning NO.)

Learning is fundamentally destabilizing - a sponsor or leadership that needs stability might not be ready for a group of subordinates that are ready to learn (make mistakes and attempt new risky behaviors).

If you are actively coaching the Org or leadership; do NOT facilitate the OpenSpace - pass the authority - it will benefit the organization and in the end, you also.

----

post workshop: I attended a one day "open space" styled conference and saw that I had learned quite a bit in Dan's sessions. Knowledge is like magic.

OpenSpaceAgility incorporates the power of invitation, Open Space, game mechanics, leadership storytelling and more…so your Agile adoption can actually take root. OSA is based on people, THEN practices. You can use any practice or framework with OSA: Scrum, Kanban, DaD, SAFe, LeSS, and more.

Most Popular on Agile Complexification Inverter

What are the individual elements that make a Scrum task board effective for the team and the leadership of the team? There are a few basic elements that are quite obvious when you have seen a few good Scrum boards... but there are some other elements that appear to elude even the most servant of leaders of Scrum teams.

In general I'm referring to a physical Scrum board. Although software applications will replicated may of the elements of a good Scrum board there will be affordances that are not easily replicated. And software applications offer features not easily implemented in the physical domain also.

Scrum Info Radiator Checklist (PDF)
Basic ElementsBoard Framework - columns and rows laid out in bold colors (blue tape works well)Attributes: space for the total number of stickies that will need to belong in each cell of the matrix; lines that are not easy eroded, but are also easy to replace; see Orientation.

Assuming you are on a Scrum/Agile software development team, then one of the first 'working agreements' you have created with your team is a 'Definition of Done' - right?

Oh - you don't have a definition of what aspects a user story that is done will exhibit. Well then, you need to create a list of attributes of a done story. One way to do this would be to Google 'definition of done' ... here let me do that for you: http://tinyurl.com/3br9o6n. Then you could just use someone else's definition - there DONE!

But that would be cheating -- right? It is not the artifact - the list of done criteria, that is important for your team - it is the act of doing it for themselves, it is that shared understanding of having a debate over some of the gray areas that create a true working agreement. If some of the team believes that a story being done means that there can be no bugs found in the code - but some believe that there can be some minor issues - well, …

Amazon book order
What I notice first and really like is the subtle implication in the shadow of the "i" in Drive is a person taking one step in a running motion. This brings to mind the old saying - "there is no I in TEAM". There is however a ME in TEAM, and there is an I in DRIVE. And when one talks about motivating a team or an individual - it all starts with - what's in it for me.

Introduction

Pink starts with an early experiment with monkeys on problem solving. Seems the monkeys were much better problem solver's than the scientist thought they should be. This 1949 experiment is explained as the early understanding of motivation. At the time there were two main drivers of motivation: biological & external influences. Harry F. Harlow defines the third drive in a novel theory: "The performance of the task provided intrinsic reward" (p 3). This is Dan Pink's M…

Does your Agile community have a local hub, a place where you are 80% sure you will run into almost everyone in the local universe if you attend enough events, meet ups, and bar tabs?

Mine does, ... let's test this out... I will tell you my locations - and if you know much about it, let's see if you can ... guess, ... no, not guess, predict, no... forecast - can you forecast the name of our local hub of Agile community?

Now if you have any experience with the DFW area ... been to user groups in the area or perhaps software development oriented conferences.... you may know the place where... like Cheers - where everybody knows your name. Who is it?

Pondering... why are gender "neutral" words such as craftsman are not as gender neutral as we men seem to think they are?
I've been personally trying to break myself from a bad habit... one that I've thought was not such a big deal... I use the term "guys" in mixed company to describe a group of people ... not yet a team. In mentoring groups toward becoming a team, I reserve that term for groups that truly behave like a real team. I was giving a presentation at a local special interest group and afterwards a person gave me some useful feedback... my usage of the term "guys" was distracting and verging on "off-putting" in the room of mostly females. I needed to read the audience and the room - and choosing the proper term would help them to engage... what I truly desired.

I remember in the 1970s (yes this should date me) teachers in school told us that some words were considered gender neutral - I believe that "guys" was on…

Popular Topics

What are the individual elements that make a Scrum task board effective for the team and the leadership of the team? There are a few basic elements that are quite obvious when you have seen a few good Scrum boards... but there are some other elements that appear to elude even the most servant of leaders of Scrum teams.

In general I'm referring to a physical Scrum board. Although software applications will replicated may of the elements of a good Scrum board there will be affordances that are not easily replicated. And software applications offer features not easily implemented in the physical domain also.

Scrum Info Radiator Checklist (PDF)
Basic ElementsBoard Framework - columns and rows laid out in bold colors (blue tape works well)Attributes: space for the total number of stickies that will need to belong in each cell of the matrix; lines that are not easy eroded, but are also easy to replace; see Orientation.

Assuming you are on a Scrum/Agile software development team, then one of the first 'working agreements' you have created with your team is a 'Definition of Done' - right?

Oh - you don't have a definition of what aspects a user story that is done will exhibit. Well then, you need to create a list of attributes of a done story. One way to do this would be to Google 'definition of done' ... here let me do that for you: http://tinyurl.com/3br9o6n. Then you could just use someone else's definition - there DONE!

But that would be cheating -- right? It is not the artifact - the list of done criteria, that is important for your team - it is the act of doing it for themselves, it is that shared understanding of having a debate over some of the gray areas that create a true working agreement. If some of the team believes that a story being done means that there can be no bugs found in the code - but some believe that there can be some minor issues - well, …

Amazon book order
What I notice first and really like is the subtle implication in the shadow of the "i" in Drive is a person taking one step in a running motion. This brings to mind the old saying - "there is no I in TEAM". There is however a ME in TEAM, and there is an I in DRIVE. And when one talks about motivating a team or an individual - it all starts with - what's in it for me.

Introduction

Pink starts with an early experiment with monkeys on problem solving. Seems the monkeys were much better problem solver's than the scientist thought they should be. This 1949 experiment is explained as the early understanding of motivation. At the time there were two main drivers of motivation: biological & external influences. Harry F. Harlow defines the third drive in a novel theory: "The performance of the task provided intrinsic reward" (p 3). This is Dan Pink's M…

Does your Agile community have a local hub, a place where you are 80% sure you will run into almost everyone in the local universe if you attend enough events, meet ups, and bar tabs?

Mine does, ... let's test this out... I will tell you my locations - and if you know much about it, let's see if you can ... guess, ... no, not guess, predict, no... forecast - can you forecast the name of our local hub of Agile community?

Now if you have any experience with the DFW area ... been to user groups in the area or perhaps software development oriented conferences.... you may know the place where... like Cheers - where everybody knows your name. Who is it?

Pondering... why are gender "neutral" words such as craftsman are not as gender neutral as we men seem to think they are?
I've been personally trying to break myself from a bad habit... one that I've thought was not such a big deal... I use the term "guys" in mixed company to describe a group of people ... not yet a team. In mentoring groups toward becoming a team, I reserve that term for groups that truly behave like a real team. I was giving a presentation at a local special interest group and afterwards a person gave me some useful feedback... my usage of the term "guys" was distracting and verging on "off-putting" in the room of mostly females. I needed to read the audience and the room - and choosing the proper term would help them to engage... what I truly desired.

I remember in the 1970s (yes this should date me) teachers in school told us that some words were considered gender neutral - I believe that "guys" was on…